


The slayer too stands ready

by dagonst



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Blood Loss, Consent Issues, Fix-It, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 13:29:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3490010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagonst/pseuds/dagonst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Khan, love, rhetoric, and blood, in a missing scene from the end of "Into Darkness".  (It's all blood, you see.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The slayer too stands ready

Khan can walk, and does. His nerves spark madly: dull impacts, a dozen close-range phaser hits, a clear white line of pain buried deep in his shoulder and up into his skull. They need him alive for the slaughter. 

They always need Khan, always will, but this is the worst sort of need. To be bled like livestock. He has failed both to lead these people, and to control them. His punishment follows swiftly. Wreathed is the bull for sacrifice. . . They will kill him, like children, forgetting that they will need him. 

The Vulcan and the Doctor - no, names - Spock, McCoy - they argue over him, over the barrels of the guns. Tense and - but not arguing, quite, only tense. He lets them push him down, onto a lift bed raised like a dentist’s chair, but he says: no.

“No. I refuse. I do not consent. No.” The words evaporate, useless vapor. Worthless, without blood.

“I’m sure I’ll feel a twinge about that later,” Doctor McCoy agrees, looking to the other. “The straps should be enough to hold him.”

“Doctor,” First Officer Acting Captain Spock says. And, behind his back and beyond merely human hearing: “It is logical that Khan repairs the damage he has caused. But we do have the means to negotiate.” 

Those words land hard. Blood - He - no, _names_ \- Khan Noonian Singh lets his head roll against the chair, to one side and then the other. Weakness, that he doesn’t dare name what he looks for. 

But when he sees it, he runs - they don’t dare kill him - hits the cryo-pod with both hands outstretched. With - he will see this in nightmares to the end of his days - James Kirk, and not one of his own.

“My people,” Khan says, looking at the dead captain.

“It was not logical to destroy them. Only the weapons were needed.”

“So here’s the deal,” the Doctor says, close behind him, but Khan stops listening because he’s already won.

They steal his blood away drop by drop (it only feels that way) as swift as thought. The world lurches sideways when he moves his head, and so does he. Then the Doctor does tie him down. They’ve saved his people. He’s saved his people. Some of this giddiness is elation.

“How would you advise us,” The Vulcan asks, after the Doctor starts draining his blood away. 

“Does that -” Khan tries a smile and feels it fail - “Does that _ever_ work?”

“In stasis, you will have no opportunity to speak. Logically, you should provide your opinion while you can.” That opinion will be judged before being passed on. Private justice, no grand spectacle. Wreathed is the bull. . . But Vulcan logic: if his advice is found worthy, it will reach higher ears. Even if the acting Captain has to claim it for his own in order to find an audience.

“Maroon us.” The idiom fails; he speaks faster against the bloodloss and the cold and the shortness of time. “Find some world at the edge of your space and send our ship on its way. If the Klingons come for revenge, let them find us first. Or perhaps our grandchildren may make common cause with yours.”

“Exile. The Botany Bay’s original mission.”

“It was a good plan when we started. I regret the complications.” A human might regret. A Vulcan might logically expect that a human would. They might think that they can mark him and drain him and trade him like cattle and have his loyalty as well.

Khan was made more than human, and knows how to judge what a life is worth. He will sleep with the people he has saved one more time, and someday they will all wake up in a new world. And the only price to pay is Captain James Kirk.

**Author's Note:**

> Very belated fix-it fic! Not that the lack of informed consent involved in the use of Khan's miracle blood was the only problem with "Into Darkness," but it is one that continues to trouble me. Thanks for reading!


End file.
